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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:
‘Bot here you lakked a lyttle, sir…’
Last week’s consideration of the anonymous Old English poem, ‘The
Seafarer’, served as a reminder of an even more famous Middle English
poem of the 14th century, ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.’ In
language, style and conception this is unlike anything in Chaucer, the
dominant voice of mediaeval English literature. This can best be
illustrated by setting the familiar opening of the latter’s ‘Prologue to
the Canterbury Tales’ alongside a comparable passage from ‘Gawain’. Here
is Chaucer:
“Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath
perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which
vertu engendred is the flour;” And here is ‘Gawain’:
“Bot thenne the weder of the worlde with winter hit threpes, Colde
clenges adoun, cloudes up-lyften, Schyre schedes the rayn in schowres
ful warme, Falles upon fayre flat, flowers there schewen,”
Northern dialect
As can be seen even without a translation, the diction is quite
unlike Chaucer’s. This is because ‘Gawain’ is written in a Northern
dialect, derived mainly from Old English, while Chaucer writes in the
more French-influenced Southern dialect which eventually developed into
Standard English. The style, too, is entirely different. In place of
Chaucer’s decasyllabic rhymed couplets, we have unrhymed lines that are
alliteratively stressed as in Old English, eg., the syllables beginning
with ‘w’ in the first line and with ‘c’ in the second, with all the
rhythmic vigour that this affords..
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Manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight |
This 2530 line poem represents a highly individualized version of the
mediaeval Romance form. To summarise the story, a green-hued, green-clad
knight rides into King Arthur’s banqueting hall and challenges any
knight present to strike him with the huge axe he carries, and present
himself in a year’s time for a return blow. Sir Gawain accepts the
challenge and beheads the Green Knight with a single blow, whereupon the
latter collects his head, calls on Gawain to meet him at the Green
Chapel a year hence, and rides away.
At the appointed time Gawain sets out northwards. After an arduous
journey in the depth of winter he comes to a castle in the middle of a
forest. Its lord bids Gawain rest awhile before resuming his journey,
getting him to agree that host and guest should exchange whatever
fortune they may gain each day of his stay. During the next three days,
while the lord goes hunting, Gawain is visited in his chamber by the
beautiful lady of the castle, whose offers of love he courteously
declines.
Faithful return
On all three occasions the lady kisses Gawain, once, twice and thrice
respectively, which kisses he faithfully returns to his host who, in
turn, presents him with his kill each evening. On the third day,
however, the lady also gives Gawain a green girdle for his protection,
making him promise not to return it to her lord. Gawain complies in the
hope that it will protect him in his forthcoming encounter.
The next day he rides forth and soon comes to the Green Chapel which
is merely a green mound. He is met by the Green Knight wielding an even
larger axe. He swings it thrice at Gawain’s proferred neck. The first
time, Gawain shrinks and is reproached by the knight. The second time,
too, the knight purposely misses but with his third swing he lets his
axe graze Gawain’s neck.
Gawain has survived the challenge, but the Green Knight now proves to
be the lord of the castle who has known all along of his lady’s
temptations. He laughingly tells Gawain that he missed the first two
times for the two days he had resisted temptation and faithfully
returned the favours he received. But he had nicked him the third time
because on the third day Gawain, whilst resisting the lady, had withheld
from his host her present of the girdle.
Crafty purpose
As the Green Knight put it, “Bot here you lakked a lyttel, sir, and
lewte you wonted; Bot that was for no wilide werke, ne wowing nauther,
Bot for ye lufed your lyf: the lasse I you blame.” (But here you lacked
a little, sir, and loyalty you wanted, But that for no crafty purpose,
nor for wooing either, But for love of your life, so I blame you the
less.) Gawain is mortified by his lapse, though small, and returns
crestfallen to Arthur’s court where he is, however, comforted by all and
held in high esteem ever after for his honourable conduct.
The narrative is rendered the more absorbing for its vivid depiction
of two sharply contrasted contexts.
These are, firstly, civilization as manifested by the high life
prevalent in Arthur’s court and the forest castle, viz: “Such glaum ande
gle glorious to here, Dere dyn upon day, daunsyng on nyghtes, Al was hap
upon heghe in halles and chambers With lords and ladies as levest him
thoght.” (Such merrymaking and glee glorious to hear, Pleasant din in
the day, dancing by night, All was the height of happiness in halls and
chambers With lords and ladies as they pleased themselves.)
Secondly, nature as manifested in the savage weather and forbidding
terrain through which Gawain makes his wintry journey northwards, viz:
“Mist mugged on the mor malt on the mountes, Ech hill had a hatte, a
mist-hakel huge.
Brokes byled and breke bi bonkkes aboute, Shyre shaterande on shores,
ther thay doun shoved.” (Mist dampened the moor melted on the mountains,
Each hill had a hat, a mist-cloak huge. Brooks boiled up and broke
through their banks, Brightly swamping their shores, then rushing
downwards.)
We realise that this vigorous, richly descriptive language is the
precursor of the creatively exploratory and metaphorically concrete
style established two hundred years later by Shakespeare, from which so
many future poets from the Metaphysical to Eliot derived their own
styles.
Chivalry and fidelity
Gawain is projected as the representative of civilisation, with his
adherence to the religio-courtly values of chivalry and fidelity, while
the larger-than-life Green Knight appears to be the very personification
of nature. He represents a natural order whose creative energies and
retributory powers are far in excess of those of civilisation. In the
denouement civilisation is weighed, as it were, in the balance and found
to be wanting by nature.
“Bot here you lakked a lyttel, sir.” For all his knightly honour,
Gawain slipped up in the matter of loyalty to his promise, Even though
civilisation later laughed it off, ‘natural piety’ as represented by the
Green Knight took him to task. Thereby was exposed a flaw in a
civilisation which, after all, despite its professed piety and
gallantry, accommodated the code of courtly love which condoned
adultery, (as famously practiced in another context by Guinevere and
Lancelot.) We might not unreasonably speculate that it was the influence
of courtly love’s deceitfulness that led to the blemish on Gawain’s
otherwise spotless reputation.
Perhaps there is something to be learned here, even in our modern
times in which religio-civilised values have seemingly become
increasingly accommodative of a spirit of moral laissez-faire. Natural
piety, on the other hand, remains unchanged and continues to exact a
sometimes terrible retribution.
That the morality of nature is less forgiving than the morality of
religion and civilisation is something that Shakespeare himself brought
out in his plays. In ‘King Lear’, for instance, we have the famous line,
“The dark and vicious place where he thee got, Cost him his eyes,” the
Duke of Gloucester having been blinded by his enemies in the very castle
in which he had secretively begotten his illegitimate son. Thus we
discern the thematic as well as the stylistic influence of ‘Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight’ on the English literary tradition. ’ |
